Top 294 Quotes & Sayings by William Makepeace Thackeray - Page 5

Who does not believe his first passion eternal?

If you will fling yourself under the wheels, Juggernaut will go over you; depend upon it.

The unambitious sluggard pretends that the eminence is not worth attaining, declines altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I say he is a poor-spirited coward.

I never was much of an oyster eater, nor can I relish them 'in naturalibus' as some do, but require a quantity of sauces, lemons, cayenne peppers, bread and butter, and so forth, to render them palatable.

I will bring order from chaos and light from darkness.

Taste is something quite different from fashion, superior to fashion.

Life is the soul's nursery.

Titles are abolished; and the American Republic swarms with men claiming and bearing them.

Oh, those women! They nurse and cuddle their presentiments, and make darlings of their ugliest thoughts.

Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders.

To know nothing, or little, is in the nature of some husbands. To hide, in the nature of how many women? Oh, ladies! how many of you have surreptitious milliners' bills? How many of you have gowns and bracelets which you daren't show, or which you wear trembling?--trembling, and coaxing with smiles the husband by your side, who does not know the new velvet gown from the old one, or the new bracelet from last year's, or has any notion that the ragged-looking yellow lace scarf cost forty guineas and that Madame Bobinot is writing dunning letters every week for the money!

The great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably contented with itself.

To our betters eve can reconcile ourselves, if you please--respecting them sincerely, laughing at their jokes, making allowance for their stupidities, meekly suffering their insolence; but we can't pardon our equals going beyond us.

Come forward, some great marshal, and organize equality in society, and your rod shall swallow up all the juggling old court gold-sticks

If fathers are sometimes sulky at the appearance of the destined son-in-law, is it not a fact that mothers become sentimental and, as it were, love their own loves over again.

Ho, pretty page, with the dimpled chin That never has known the barber's shear, All your wish is woman to win, This is the way that boys begin. Wait till you come to Forty Year.

Where is truth, forsooth, and who knoweth it? Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so? Does Venus squint? Has she got a splay-foot, red hair, and a crooked back? Anoint my eyes, good Fairy Puck, so that I may ever consider the Beloved Object a paragon! Above all, keep on anointing my mistress's dainty peepers with the very strongest ointment, so that my noddle may ever appear lovely to her, and that she may continue to crown my honest ears with fresh roses!

The death of a child occasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will never inspire.

In effective womanly beauty form is more than face, and manner more than either.

Let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned have a great tenderness and pity for the poor folks who are not endowed with the prodigious talents which we have.

A good woman is the loveliest flower that blooms under heaven; and we look with love and wonder upon its silent grace, its pure fragrance, its delicate bloom of beauty.

If a man has committed wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his errors out to the world than his own relations.

One tires of a page of which every sentence sparkles with points, of a sentimentalist who is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own.

Ah! gracious Heaven gives us eyes to see our own wrong, however dim age may make them; and knees not too stiff to kneel, in spite of years, cramp, and rheumatism.

[As they say in the old legends]Before a man goes to the devil himself, he sends plenty of other souls thither.

Be it remembered that man subsists upon the air more than upon his meat and drink; but no one can exist for an hour without a copious supply of air. The atmosphere which some breathe is contaminated and adulterated, and with its vital principles so diminished that it cannot fully decarbonize the blood, nor fully excite the nervous system.

Charming Alnaschar visions! it is the happy privilege of youth to construct you.

The play is done; the curtain drops, Slow falling to the prompter's bell A moment yet the actor stops And looks around to say farewell.

Could the best and kindest of us who depart from the earth have an opportunity of revisiting it, I suppose he or she (assuming that any Vanity Fair feelings subsist in the sphere whither we are bound) would have a pang of mortification at finding how soon our survivors were consoled.

That which we call a snob by any other name would still be snobbish.

It is all very well for you, who have probably never seen any spiritual manifestations, to talk as you do; but if you had seen what I have witnessed you would hold a different opinion.

Women like not only to conquer, but to be conquered.

A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES.

Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, 'To-morrow, success or failure won't matter much; and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil.'

The thorn in the cushion of the editorial chair.

Tis misfortune that awakens ingenuity, or fortitude, or endurance, in hearts where these qualities had never come to life but for the circumstance which gave them a being.

There is no good in living in a society where you are merely the equal of everybody else. The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.

Pray, dear madam, another glass; it is Christmas time, it will do you no harm.

The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.

If I mayn't tell you what I feel, what is the use of a friend?

What is a gentleman? It is to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise; and possessed of all these qualities to exercise them in the most graceful manner.

We have only to change the point of view and the greatest action looks mean.

A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no heed to her, if she has a plain face. What folly will not a pair of bright eyes make pardonable? What dullness may not red lips are sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome nor wise.

Fairy roses, fairy rings, turn out sometimes troublesome things.

Novelty has charms that our minds can hardly withstand.

The tallest and the smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base, it is a meanness to calculate the difference.

How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy! Pendennis. Book ii. Chap. xxxi.

What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the bankers! How tenderly we look at her faults if she is a relative; what a kind, good-natured old creature we find her!

And in those varieties of pain of which we spoke anon, what a part of confidante has that poor teapot played ever since the kindly plant was introduced among us! What myriads of women have cried over it, to be sure! What sickbeds it has smoked by! What fevered lips have received refreshment from out of it! Nature meant very gently by women when she made that teaplant; and with a little thought what a series of pictures and groups the fancy may conjure up and assemble round the teapot and cup!

The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice.

He first selected the smallest one...and then bowed his head as though he were saying grace. Opening his mouth very wide, he struggled for a moment, after which all was over. I shall never forget the comic look of despair he cast upon the other five over-occupied shells. I asked him how he felt. 'Profoundly grateful,' he said, 'as if I had swallowed a small baby.'

Might I give counsel to any man, I would say to him, try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and in life, that is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what great men admire.

We love being in love, that's the truth on't.

As if the ray which travels from the sun would reach me sooner than the man who blacks my boots.